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The category field in every ParseTx enrichment result is a strictly typed string drawn from a fixed taxonomy of 15 values. ParseTx never returns a free-form category string — if your code receives a category, it is guaranteed to be one of the values on this page. This predictability means you can build category-based filters, budget buckets, and spend dashboards without defensive string parsing or fuzzy matching.

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The 15-Category Taxonomy

CategoryDescription
ShoppingGeneral retail purchases, e-commerce platforms, and marketplaces
GroceriesSupermarkets, grocery chains, and grocery delivery services
Food & DrinkRestaurants, cafes, fast food, bars, and food delivery apps
Gas & FuelGas stations, petrol retailers, and EV charging networks
TransportationRideshare services, taxi, public transit, tolls, and parking
EntertainmentStreaming services, gaming platforms, ticketed events, and cinemas
Digital ServicesApp stores, digital content platforms, and online media subscriptions
SoftwareSaaS products, developer tools, and cloud computing services
UtilitiesPhone carriers, internet providers, electric, gas, and water services
TravelAirlines, hotels, car rental, vacation booking platforms
TransferPeer-to-peer payments, wire transfers, and money movement services
Payroll & TaxPayroll processing services, employer tax payments, and tax software
HealthcarePharmacies, hospitals, clinics, dental, vision, and telehealth services
Fees & ChargesBank fees, interest charges, overdraft fees, and foreign transaction fees
UnknownMerchant could not be categorized with sufficient confidence

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Category Details

Shopping

General retail and e-commerce. Applies to Amazon, Walmart, Target, Etsy, eBay, and similar platforms. Use this category for general merchandise purchases where no more specific category (Groceries, Healthcare, etc.) applies.

Groceries

Dedicated grocery retailers. Applies to Whole Foods, Kroger, Trader Joe’s, Instacart, and grocery delivery services. Distinct from Shopping — a Walmart Supercenter purchase may map to Shopping while a Whole Foods Market purchase maps to Groceries.

Food & Drink

Restaurants, cafes, fast food, and delivery apps. Applies to McDonald’s, Starbucks, DoorDash, Uber Eats, Grubhub, and similar merchants. Covers both dine-in and delivery transactions.

Gas & Fuel

Fuel retailers and EV charging. Applies to Shell, ExxonMobil, BP, Chevron, ChargePoint, and Tesla Supercharger. Does not include auto repair — see Fees & Charges or Shopping for those.

Transportation

Getting from place to place. Applies to Uber, Lyft, transit agencies, toll operators, and parking services. Distinct from Travel — a daily Uber to work is Transportation; a flight to a conference is Travel.

Entertainment

Leisure and media consumption. Applies to Netflix, Spotify, Steam, AMC Theatres, concert ticket vendors, and gaming platforms. Broadly covers any subscription or one-time purchase for entertainment content or experiences.

Digital Services

App stores and digital content. Applies to Apple App Store, Google Play, Adobe Creative Cloud, iCloud+, and similar platforms that deliver digital goods. Overlaps with Software — the distinction is consumer-facing digital content (Digital Services) vs. developer or business tools (Software).

Software

Business and developer tools. Applies to GitHub, Vercel, AWS, Google Cloud, Notion, Figma, Slack, and other SaaS products used primarily in a professional or development context.

Utilities

Essential home services. Applies to phone carriers (AT&T, Verizon), internet providers (Comcast, Spectrum), and electric, gas, and water utilities. If a transaction string is ambiguous between a utility and a SaaS product, ParseTx uses the MCC code to resolve it.

Travel

Travel booking and accommodation. Applies to airlines, hotels, Airbnb, Booking.com, Hertz, and travel agencies. Intended for trip-related spending rather than daily commute costs.

Transfer

Money movement between people or accounts. Applies to Venmo, Cash App, PayPal P2P, Zelle, and wire transfer services. Does not include merchant payments — only transfers where the counterparty is another individual or financial account.

Payroll & Tax

Employer-side payroll and tax transactions. Applies to Gusto, ADP, Paychex, and direct tax authority payment strings (e.g. IRS TREAS or ACH DEBIT GUSTO TAX). Typically appears on business accounts rather than consumer accounts.

Healthcare

Medical and wellness spending. Applies to pharmacies (CVS, Walgreens), hospital systems, dental offices, telehealth platforms (Teladoc), and health insurance premium payments.

Fees & Charges

Financial institution charges. Applies to bank service fees, credit card interest charges, overdraft fees, ATM fees, and foreign transaction fees. These are charges from your financial institution itself, not from a merchant.

Unknown

Returned when ParseTx cannot determine a category with sufficient confidence. This is not an error — it is an honest signal. Your application should handle Unknown gracefully, for example by showing a generic icon or prompting the user to manually categorize the transaction.

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The Unknown Category

Unknown is returned in two situations:
  1. Low-confidence enrichment — The AI inference returned a result but confidence was too low to assign a reliable category. The merchant and domain fields may still be populated even when category is Unknown.
  2. Unresolvable merchant — The merchant has no digital footprint, uses a cryptic terminal string, or is an individual seller via Square or similar platforms.
Unknown is a valid, expected value in production traffic. Real-world bank feeds contain individual sellers, local merchants, and obscure regional chains that no enrichment service can reliably classify. Plan your UI for this case — don’t treat it as a bug.

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MCC Codes and Category Relationship

Each enrichment result also includes an mcc_code field (a 4-digit ISO 18245 Merchant Category Code) whenever one can be determined. MCC codes provide finer-grained classification within a category — for example, both fast food restaurants and sit-down restaurants map to Food & Drink, but they carry different MCC codes (5814 vs 5812). This lets you build stricter expense policies, accounting rules, or analytics breakdowns without managing your own sub-taxonomy.
The category field is designed for human-readable display and high-level bucketing. The mcc_code field is designed for programmatic rules engines and compliance integrations that require the precision of the ISO 18245 standard. Use both together for maximum flexibility.

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Using Categories in Your Application

{
  "input": "RECURRING PMT AUTHORIZED ON 05/01 NETFLIX.COM",
  "status": "complete",
  "source": "cache",
  "merchant": "Netflix",
  "domain": "netflix.com",
  "category": "Entertainment",
  "mcc_code": "4899",
  "is_subscription": true,
  "confidence": 1
}
Because category is always one of these 15 exact strings, you can safely use a switch statement, enum check, or dictionary lookup in your code: 
const CATEGORY_ICONS: Record<string, string> = {
  "Shopping":         "🛍️",
  "Groceries":        "🛒",
  "Food & Drink":     "🍽️",
  "Gas & Fuel":       "⛽",
  "Transportation":   "🚗",
  "Entertainment":    "🎬",
  "Digital Services": "📱",
  "Software":         "💻",
  "Utilities":        "⚡",
  "Travel":           "✈️",
  "Transfer":         "↔️",
  "Payroll & Tax":    "🏦",
  "Healthcare":       "❤️",
  "Fees & Charges":   "🧾",
  "Unknown":          "❓",
};

const icon = CATEGORY_ICONS[result.category] ?? "❓";
Store the raw category string in your database rather than an integer enum. ParseTx’s taxonomy is stable, and string storage keeps your schema human-readable and debuggable without a lookup table.